Chinese Tech Group Offers To Buy Opera; Board Endorses 120
jones_supa writes: There's been plenty of speculation around the future of web browser maker Opera, and now that looks like it will soon be resolved. Today the Norway-headquartered company confirmed that it has received a $1.2 billion acquisition offer from a group fronted by Chinese consumer tech companies Kunlun Tech and Qihoo 360. The deal is for 100% of the company, and it represents a 53% premium on the company's valuation based on its most recent trading price. Opera's board said in a statement (PDF) that it has "unanimously decided to recommend" its shareholders to accept the bid. The final deal is subject to government and shareholders' approvals.
Noooooooooo (Score:2)
Please no. Please? Opera is one of the few innovators in the browser space that manages to pack features without getting bloated.
Re: Noooooooooo (Score:2, Insightful)
Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.
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I think you meant 12.17
http://www.opera.com/download/... [opera.com]
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Opera 12.16 date back from 7/2013 and that was pretty much when real Opera browser came to an end. 12.17 was kind of an odd release. It came out well after the Chromium-based Opera was out, and basically only fixed SSL. It was nice of them to do that, I certainly didn't expect them to release any patches for Opera 12 at that point. It's interesting though that they still list it as the "stable" release, with Opera 35 as a "beta".
I do have to admit though, if you want to use a Blink-based browser but don
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Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.
It will soon become the equivalent of Chinese spyware.
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Opera hasnt been like that for 6-7 years. Its garbage now as a desktop app.
It's crap for you...I use it on my Mac on El Capitan and it uses less memory than Chrome with the same amount of extensions. Let alone Opera pushes out (security) updates faster than Google.
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Yes, making a reskinned Chrome is super innovative.
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Telling the truth is flamebait? Downmodding Opera fangirl, please do tell what is innovative about current Opera? It looks 95% like Chrome.
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Exactly. All the innovation of Opera was thrown out long ago when it just became a Chrome reskin.
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In the latter years, what I really liked about Opera were, aside from its
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Right. Because you can tell how an app will perform by the looks of its interface...
So then what are these innovative features that I'm not seeing?
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Perhaps its the same person who did this: http://news.slashdot.org/comme... [slashdot.org]
Probably a troll who got their five modpoints by accident and now wastes it as trollish as possible.
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As it stands now, 4 years later. Opera 30+...? You still can't organize your extensions on the only place you are allowed to put them (the address bar).
If you want a browser that is actually customizable -
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Revisionist History? In fact we were told Opera Blink would NOT have many of O12's features.
Yeah, a few versions into the switch.
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What Chinese companies with the government of China's backing is actually doing, is offloading crappy US dollar debt, before the big bang. They'll be buying all sorts of stuff with the US dollars the US government owes them and whole bunch of countries are going to get burdened with what looks to become a pretty vaporous currency, they are basically swapping dollar debt for capital assets (shh, the era of the petro-dollar has come to an end).
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When did you try it? It sounds like they released the first beta in the beginning of November, the second beta in the middle of December, and they've been working on bug fixes since then. Their blog [vivaldi.net] has several posts through January and this month talking about all of the fixes and improvements they're doing. The posts have well over 100 comments each, so people are actively helping them test. It sounds like they're trying to hit a deadline but I don't see any release date mentioned for the first stable
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Smells like money laundering to me, the Chinese government have cracked down on people moving money out of the country, so it might be an end run around those rules.
Beijing Opera! (Score:5, Funny)
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Bing Maps is better than Google Maps. I especially like the Bird Eye view feature it has. It's always kind of funny when someone asks how I made Google Maps do that, and then I have to tell them it's Bing...
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I made the switch to Chrome and have been using StrokeIt to get mouse gestures in it (avoiding the plugins that report your browsing). The side-benefit is that I get mouse-gestures for all apps on an app-by-app configurable basis and any gesture that I could possible want or conceive of.
Still miss some features from the old Opera, but 12 was just getting too long in the tooth and even it had gone backwards in some ways from 10.
Nope, getting uninstalled (Score:2)
The difference in culture surrounding privacy between the Chinese and Norwegians is the dark side of Earth's moon to Mercury's sun-side.
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You know that it's based on Chromium, right? Opera stopped being opera a long time ago.
My question is, why would they (the Chinese) pay so much for the name (it's not like they're paying for the code - Chromium source code is freely available), unless it's to put their own brand of spyware into it.
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I'd be especially wary of Opera's Turbo feature (which I think is only on their mobile browser now?). The feature where an Opera server downloads the webpage, recompresses it, and then sends it to your device. Saves on bandwidth, but also a prime opportunity to inject something nasty into the webpage you're trying to view.
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If this goes through, Opera is getting ripped out of every computer I had it on. Time to go looking for a replacement browser.
The difference in culture surrounding privacy between the Chinese and Norwegians is the dark side of Earth's moon to Mercury's sun-side.
Yup, here too. Though I've begun using Vivaldi on my desktop(s) as my main browser, I do still use Opera when I need another browser and on my mobile devices. Sad times, my friend. Sad times.
Opera's over (Score:2)
..the fat lady has sung.
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had to say it (Score:1)
Opela
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Opela
That might have been vaguely funny, if it has been about a Japanese company. The 'R'-sound is quite commonly used in Chinese.
$1.8 billion (Score:3)
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Why would you add $600,000,000? I know you love to troll a lot, but come on...
He's reading it from Canada.
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Instagram is growing. Opera is dying. (Score:1)
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Trough its entire lifetime, Opera software has somehow always managed to claw in amazing deals or bundles, or getting paid good buck for bundled browsers.
They was the default JAVA browser for several years for phone, until the iPhone existed. The browser for the Nintendo Wii.
They also have a interesting purchase history, such as Skyfire(content delivery compression), AdColony, and more.
Technology wise they most likely burned out completely after releasing Opera 12. So its for the leftover talent, IP, and in
We respect your privacy. Hey look money! (Score:2)
I'd keep an eye on this in the next few weeks:
http://www.opera.com/privacy [opera.com]
What will happen to Fastmail? (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't Opera buy Fastmail a few years ago? As a long time Fastmail user, like so many other tech people, I'd worry about my email provider being controlled by the Chinese.
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http://ceoworld.biz/ceo/2013/09/26/australian-based-email-provider-fastmail-became-a-privately-held-independent-company-29920932/ [ceoworld.biz]
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Didn't Opera buy Fastmail a few years ago? As a long time Fastmail user, like so many other tech people, I'd worry about my email provider being controlled by the Chinese.
When Opera was first released they were up front about their Emailer, said you really might not like our style and try a different one. I'm not sure where Fastmail came in or even if.
I use Forte Agent.
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like so many other tech people, I'd worry about my email provider being controlled by the Chinese.
I'd worry more about email controlled by America. If nothing else at least the Chinese don't care what I do over here.
Fastmail split from Opera in 2013 (Score:2)
Full disclosure: I use (and highly recommend) Fastmail.
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Why is it I can't find any references to the Tiananamen Square Massacre on the web anymore? Why do all references to "Taiwan" either refer to "Chinese Taipei" or just give a blank page? Too bad .. I really liked Opera.
I've been watching Opera.com for awhile now, it's never gone away.
https://www.robtex.com/en/advi... [robtex.com]
China blues (Score:5, Insightful)
China is due for a massive correction in the economy. Debt driven growth has reached saturation and from now on, we will see a lot of deleveraging and money being printed (ie. QE) to prevent deflation.
Acquisitions is one of the best ways to swap depreciating Yuan assets (to use as collateral) and turn them into foreign assets. As the likelihood that CNY will devalue increases, you will see more and more of these desperate deals.
Re:China blues (Score:4, Insightful)
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A good part of the pressure sending interest rates to negative is the capital flight from China. After 8 years of global expansion the world is due for a recession.
The crowd is chanting ... (Score:4, Informative)
revive the Presto engine!
Seriously, I would hate the world where everything revolves around WebKit though I've got a sneaking suspicion we already live in it.
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You misspelled Blink.
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You can still find Opera 12 [oldversion.com]
Thanks for link, was going to offer my held full version of Opera 12. It works on most sites, just fine on /.
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They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/... [opera.com]
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They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/... [opera.com]
Every time Version 12 has tried to update it been from a redirect to Opera.com, the address is in my hosts file now, download the link given above for version 12.4
and do read the fact it's encrypted and requires the password: oldversion to install.
- Opera 12 updated on me once and there no warning it just took it upon itself to do.
- At one time (I reinstall my Win OS's regularly) for java to work with Opera 12, the new version had to be installed as well, while in a different directory it fixed Opera 12 som
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They do have older version for download from opera.com
http://www.opera.com/download/... [opera.com]
Every time Version 12 has tried to update it been from a redirect to Opera.com, the address is in my hosts file now, download the link given above for version 12.4
and do read the fact it's encrypted and requires the password: oldversion to install.
- Opera 12 updated on me once and there no warning it just took it upon itself to do.
Damnedest thing just happened, I clicked on the link posted and was taken here http://www.opera.com/download/... [opera.com] -all versions from 35 to 11 are listed for download and for all OS's, so I don't what to say now.
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My Bad, I misread your post as a question, and was your link I clicked on - nice find.
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Opera Mini (Score:4, Interesting)
Opera Mini intercepts all web traffic in order to reshape/recompress
It acts like a sort of "Man n the middle" for web traffic.
Put on your tinfoil hats boys and girls, this will be a wonderful ride.
PS: Also, think of all the Symbian(S60)/ASHA(S40)/NokiaX phones whose browser and store is handled by Opera now, by way of Microsoft...
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/flow/item/20265_Nokia_Store_to_be_replaced_by_.php
It was dead anyway (Score:2)
Opera already was on its way into a death spiral. They decided they couldn't keep up with the pace development of other rendering engines with Presto, so they said they were going to clean-sheet remake Opera using Blink.
Well, what they really did was make a crappy Chromealike skin for Blink and give the middle finger to their loyal users. Why would you download or use this instead of Chrome/Chromium? It doesn't make sense.
Luckily, some of the original people have been actually working on a real "Opera on Bl
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I use the mobile version as it is the only browser I know which does decent reflow of text when you zoom in.
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Yes, that is a nice feature.
If they would go ahead and add extension support to Opera Mobile like the teased with that developer preview a couple years ago, I would reinstall it... that would get me off mobile Firefox (ugh), which does have extension support.
Sam
They drop it to it's version 12 standard (Score:2)
I start reading in Chinese.
Great: Opera + Chinese Spyware (Score:1)
Vivaldi's time is now! (Score:2)
Vivaldi MUST hurry with it's stability and polish. I've been using the snapshot release(s) as my main browser for a couple months now, but still put up with a few stupid annoying bugs -- mainly extension-related. But I absolutely LOVE how customizable the interface is -- I was able to bring back my most-beloved Opera feature, tabs on the side! Everything else they're doing is so in that Opera Presto vein, that we Opera fans do truly now have a successor to the Opera Presto line. It'll be so much better
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He objects to manga being considered child porn? Ain't my thing, but doesn't that make him "a sane human being"?
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Interesting. I have tried Otter before...but only for a small time. Think I'll test it out again (given they have an OS X port).